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This avalanche advisory is provided through a partnership between the Tahoe National Forest and the Sierra Avalanche Center. This advisory covers the Central Sierra Nevada Mountains between Yuba Pass on the north and Ebbetts Pass on the south. Click here for a map of the forecast area. This advisory applies only to backcountry areas outside established ski area boundaries. This advisory describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur. This advisory expires 24 hours after the posted time unless otherwise noted. The information in this advisory is provided by the USDA Forest Service who is solely responsible for its content.

This Avalanche Advisory was published on November 30, 2006:

November 30, 2006 at 1:00 am

Forecast Discussion:

This advisory was posted on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 1:30 pm

Our SAC Ski Day tickets are now available. This year they can be bought online thanks to Snowbomb.com (just click on the link above). What a great way to do some skiing or riding and support your avalanche center. Our first one is at Mt. Rose on December 17th. We hope to see you there.

Overnight we saw the temperatures warming up and the winds moderating. This trend is expected to continue for the next few days. As the snow pack starts to adjust to the warmer temps, you may see some small, loose, surface slides in the new snow layers from the recent storm. The warming trend will also begin to heal the weakness in the snow pack. We have already seen some settlement as the snow starts to compress and form stronger bonds. If these temperatures stick around long enough we may even be able to reverse some of the faceting in the bottom of the pack. The stronger bonding also means less snow will be available for wind transport, which will let us keep more snow more evenly distributed on the ground.

The warmth will form some melt freeze and sun crusts throughout the forecast area. They will be most prevalent and thickest on the southerly aspects. On the shaded northerly aspects expect much less crust formation. The longer it stays warm the thicker, stronger and more widespread these crusts will be. In the future this could be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing will be if the crusts become strong enough to support us and help keep us off some of the buried obstacles. The curse will be that these crusts will be very smooth layers that could provide an excellent bed surface for an avalanche during our next cold storm.

There are stumps, rocks, creeks (brrrr), downed trees, and all sorts of other things for you to hit with your snowmobile, skis, snowboard, or in the worst case some part of your body lurking just below the snow surface. If you do get out be careful and please let us know what you see.

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This website is owned and maintained by the non-profit arm of the Sierra Avalanche Center. Some of the content is updated by the USDA avalanche forecasters including the forecasts and some observational data. The USDA is not responsible for any advertising, fund-raising events/information, or sponsorship information, or other content not related to the forecasts and the data pertaining to the forecasts.